Alright, it's time to get going

That's about enough of the malarkey.

You can’t win the division in April, but you can lose it. You can’t do either of those things before you start your second homestand but the 2024 Mariners are giving it a hell of a shot.

With this blog, I’m going to do a better job of getting y’all something even when that something is only my current thoughts. This is that, and the thesis of said thoughts would be: gents, this sucks, and that’s about enough of that.

If the Mariners win for a week straight, they will be one game over .500. That sucks.

Alternatively, if they lose the finale vs. the Blue Jays, they will be five games under .500. I’m not going to do the math because 1.) I am not good with the BBREF finders and 2.) I said this would just be my thoughts, but I bet there are more teams who go five under and never see .500 again than teams who go .500 and make the playoffs.

So, hey, yeah. Let’s get it going.

The Mariners have played abysmal. If there’s a single phase of the game that’s kind of working, that might be the bullpen and even that’s only so-so. The starting pitching is bad, the offense is bad and the defense plays like half the team’s thumbs magically moved to the other side of their hands.

This was all a good deal less shudder-inducing when they were .500 or one game below .500 but now they’ve played 12 games and lost twice as many as they’ve won.

Their playoff odds have slid 22 percentage points since they left since Peoria.

The Mariners should perhaps consider cutting it out.

This publication will continue to be the only place you can get commentary on the only team to never make a World Series with rando pinball analogies mixed in.

I am not good at pinball. I can’t make that more clear. I play a lot of pinball but I am not good at it.

I am actually quite good at playing bad pinball, though. I don’t know exactly all it takes to be good at pinball but it starts with not playing bad pinball—a concept that, absurdly, has become more clear for me recently.

What is bad pinball? I may have talked about this before but I’m too embarassed about the potential of writing about it twice to go look back now. Bad pinball often manifests in a competitive setting, when nerves lead you to not trust yourself to play the game the way you know how.

Slow the game down? Trap and control the ball? Go from there to hit your shots with focus and intent? There’ll be none of that.

No, no, no—when playing in a tournament or league match, you obviously want to play the game like a nine-year-old at the Zips in Couer D’Alene that randomly has an Indianapolis 500, panic-slapping at the ball with the only goal being to hit it upward and keep it from draining. Even though that’s exactly how you drain it.

You can’t and won’t play good pinball when you’re playing bad pinball.

There’s probably some analogy to controlling the strike zone and winning 1-1 counts or focusing on fundamentals when fielding the baseball but I won’t even go that deep.

The Mariners will not be good if their good players are bad. What a concept, I know.

With that, some numbers.

To date, the homegrown core of Julio, J.P. and Cal: .168/.235/.248, 47 wRC+, -0.1 fWAR

Your supposed offensive core of that trio plus Garver and Polanco: .170/.244/.250, 49 fWAR, -0.6 fWAR

Your starting rotation: 3-7, 6.11 ERA, 0.6 fWAR (17th in baseball)

There’s no bigger “It is so damn dumb and downright malicious for this ownership group to not supplement this core and that’s why we should have a 100 percent marginal tax rate over $1 billion” guy than me but even a Shohei who could pitch isn’t fitting all those guys in a backpack and carrying them to a winning record.

Players gotta play better. It starts there.

And they will play better. Or, they should play better.

We’re not necessarily asking them to play better than they ever have, just to a level that’s more representative of their talent.

You can tell, they’re pressing. They’re pissed. It’s understandable.

But hey, just slow down. You’ve done this. You’re capable of doing this. But you’re not capable of doing this when you’re pressing, when you’re not trusting your training and just flailing.

It’s early, though it’s not early for much longer. Still, the division isn’t great right now and you’re just fine.

If the baseball season were a pinball game, they’d have played less than a quarter of their first ball. So they went for a tough skill-shot, had a shitty plunge, drained and got a ball save? Oh I do that all the time.

Time to get going. Beat up on Yusei, find a way to salvage the series and head home to beautiful Seattle. It’s going to be almost 60 today with more good Pacific Northwest weather on the way this weekend.

No better time to get right.

Go M’s.